The leaves on which the cuts are printed make but part of a little book
not so large as a child's primer; but a copy of it is now worth ten
times its weight in gold. It was copied and republished in numberless
editions, as a popular book, merely for the sake of the subject, and
the great lesson taught by it,--each print being accompanied by an
admonitory stanza, and a quotation from the Bible. Beside these
editions, endeavors have been made of later years to imitate it
satisfactorily as a work of Art,--but in vain. Great as we think our
advancement in the arts has been,--the mechanical part of them, at
least,--all the efforts of the lithographer, the wood-cutter, and even
the line-engraver, to reproduce the spirit or the very lines of this
work, have been but partially successful. There is as much difference
between the most carefully-executed and costliest copies and good
impressions of the original wood-cuts, made three hundred years ago, and
sold for a franc or two, as there is between pinchbeck and gold.
Any attempt to reproduce the effect of those groups in words can hardly
fail to fall equally short of the mark; but we will tell our readers
what they are, and endeavor to give some notion of their purpose and
spirit.
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